


you say now you love me

by toxica939



Series: who we were when [4]
Category: Emmerdale
Genre: Alternate Universe - Teenagers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-22
Updated: 2018-08-22
Packaged: 2019-07-01 04:17:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15766425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toxica939/pseuds/toxica939
Summary: As a general rule, Robert considers himself to be reasonably charismatic, so he can only assume he's been spending too much time with Aaron when the only thing that will come out of his mouth is a gruff, “Do I know you?”She blinks. “We've had geography together since year seven,” she says. “You're in my form.”“No I know that,” says Robert, who did not know that. “I just mean, you've never spoken to me before.”





	you say now you love me

The closer it gets to Christmas, the icier the mornings are, and the icier the mornings are, the higher they crank the heat on Robert's morning bus. Which is his explanation for why he's hunched at the back with his forehead pressed to the fogged up window – it's fucking boiling and the air feels damp in his lungs. It's rank.

He sits up when Donna Windsor plops down beside him, shaking her umbrella out in the gangway. “I can't take another day of this weather,” she says, puffing her frizzy fringe up and down. “I look a state.”

Robert, who has shared maybe three conversations with Donna in his entire life that weren't about whether or not she had a spare pen, just stares at her. There's a cold, wet patch on his forehead from the window, he wonders if it's red.

“Do you know if Miss Keane's back today?” she asks him. “I hope not, I didn't have time to do the reading last night, Kelly had this mental drama with – do you know the Kings? You must do. Anyway, it was mad. We had this bloke's wife shouting outside all through tea.”

Robert's not sure what he's supposed to say to that, so it's handy that she doesn't seem to require his participation. He thinks he might have fingered her sister at the post Macbeth cast party in year ten. It was some dark haired girl in a witch's costume anyway.

She trails off in the end, and he notes that she does have the decency to look embarrassed. “Sorry, I've just been monologuing at you. How are you?”

As a general rule, Robert considers himself to be reasonably charismatic, so he can only assume he's been spending too much time with Aaron when the only thing that will come out of his mouth is a gruff, “Do I know you?”

She blinks. “We've had geography together since year seven,” she says. “You're in my form.”

“No I know that,” says Robert, who did not know that. “I just mean, you've never spoken to me before.”

That gets him a scoff. “More like you've never spoken to me. Anyway,” she fiddles with the velcro on her wet umbrella. “You looked like you could use a friend.”

Robert swallows. The only thing that makes him bite down on the urge to throw her pity right back in her face, is the fact that he can't be arsed making a scene. Well, that and the fact that she's right.

“I'm fine thanks,” he tells her.

“Right.”

He takes a second to look at her. She's lanky, all arms and legs, hair a mess, and there's a line on her jaw where she's not rubbed her make up in properly. She looks tired. Robert reckons she probably doesn't know how pretty she is.

Maybe he's not the only one who needs a friend.

He sighs. “So which King's your sister been banging?”

:::

Aaron thinks it's hilarious.

“Donna Windsor,” he keeps saying, chuckling to himself.

You'd think he'd be more grateful that Robert's stood there making tea for them both. But no.

“No,” Aaron says. “But I mean. _Donna Windsor_.”

Robert puts his knife down before he does something he might regret. “Yes, Aaron. I had lunch with Donna Windsor, she was moderately pleasant to talk to. She's going to come round tomorrow to revise for geography. Are you done?”

The dismissive hand Aaron waves is holding a piece of carrot he's stolen from Robert's chopping board. “Nearly. All I'm saying is-”

“Donna Windsor?”

“Exactly!” Aaron takes a bite of the carrot, chews it obnoxiously. Sometimes, Robert really does question his life choices.

Luckily for Aaron, he'd sloped round straight from work, peeled his overalls off in Robert's room, used all of Robert's stuff in the shower, and stolen Robert's softest jumper. He looks edible.

“You're an arsehole,” is what he says.

Aaron holds up his hands. “Alright, calm down. I'm just saying, she's not your usual type.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

Aaron looks away, shrugging. He thinks Robert can't see right through him sometimes.

Robert reaches out, snags the front of Aaron's jumper with his fingertips to curl it up in his fist. He backs his bum into the corner of the kitchen counter and draws Aaron to him. “I'm revising for mocks with her,” Robert tells him, arms slipping around his waist. “Not looking for a shag.”

Aaron rolls his eyes, hands by his sides. “You're always looking for a shag.”

Robert tilts his head, cuddles him in a bit closer. “Yeah. With you.”

Aaron's hands flutter up to Robert's shoulders, rubbing at the material over his arms. There are tiny flecks of black in the blue of Aaron's eyes, and his mouth is chapped from the cold. He smells like washing powder Robert isn't used to yet, and the underneaths of Robert's own arms. He's the only thing Robert has ever wanted, really wanted, for himself and no one else.

“I promise you,” Robert says. “You're it. It's a done deal, I'm off the market.”

He watches Aaron's teeth rake up against his top lip, feels the swell and collapse of his chest against Robert's own when he breathes.

“Yeah?” Aaron asks.

“Hundred percent. All yours.”

Aaron's mouth turns down, like, _ok then_. Honestly, he's such an arse.

“And you're mine?”

Aaron rolls his eyes again but he's smiling a bit, like he can't help himself. “Obviously.”

“That's sorted then.”

“Looks like.”

He gives Aaron a little kiss, hugs him tighter for a moment. “Can I finish tea now then?”

But Aaron's shaking his head, hands coming up to Robert's face, saying, _in a minute_ , and pulling Robert down into a proper kiss. The kind that has Robert's breath catching, toes curling in his socks against Paddy's awful linoleum floor.

Aaron's hands tilt Robert's face this way and that; slow, dragging kisses making his cheeks heat up. He gathers Aaron to him when it turns wetter, Aaron's tongue moving against his own. Nothing but the sound of blood rushing in his ears and Aaron gasping into the space where their mouths meet.

Robert's about thirty seconds away from saying, fuck tea, and dragging Aaron upstairs, when the ground drops out from under him. Quite literally. Aaron gets a firm hand around the back of each of Robert's thighs and hefts him up onto the counter, fitting himself between Robert's legs as tightly as he can.

Robert cups a hand around the back of Aaron's head to kiss down into his mouth, folds the other around his shoulders to keep him close. Aaron's hands are hot over Robert's ribs through his t shirt, curling enough to tickle, make him flinch and laugh into Aaron's mouth. It doesn't seem to put him off any; he's rocked up on his toes, Robert's knees sliding against his waist. Robert's dick is fucking throbbing, nowhere near enough relief to be found in the soft press and slide of Aaron's belly against him.

He gets his hands down, fingers pushing under the waistband of Aaron's jeans, into his underwear to cup his bum. It hunches him over, the sturdy weight of Aaron and his hot mouth the only thing keeping him from tumbling to the ground.

Aaron tears his mouth away. “Not here,” he says, but his hands are slipping up under Robert's t shirt, pushing it up to his armpits while Aaron ducks to suck kisses down his chest. Wet heat over one of Robert's nipples, just the way he likes, has his head dropping back, dead weight, hands coming free to hold himself up on the counter.

He squeezes Aaron with his legs, panting up at the ceiling. “We need to go upstairs,” he says, to show willing, but Aaron's got his belt open and his mouth is scalding, and Robert couldn't give a fuck about anything else. This is all there is. Him and Aaron, and the pulsing, clawing want in the centre of his chest.

They order pizza in the end. And thank their lucky stars that Paddy got caught on call out.

:::

“Did you always know you were gay?”

Robert looks up at her from his seat on the floor. She's on her belly across his bed, feet poking up in the air behind her, chin in her hand.

He taps the textbook spread open by his knee. “We're supposed to be revising.”

“Don't be so square,” Donna says, which Robert thinks is a bit rich. “Come on, I'm interested. Have you and Aaron been together in secret for years or what? Kelly says she always knew you fancied him.”

“Kelly's a slag.”

She shrugs. “So are you. You've shagged half our year.”

“I have not,” but he can't help his mouth twitching. “A third, maybe.”

She laughs, so maybe he's not completely wasting his time hanging out with her.

“So did you?”

“What?”

“Know you were gay?”

He shakes his head, doesn't know if it's really worth explaining it to her. “I'm not gay, I still like girls.”

“But you like Aaron more?”

He puts his pen down, sitting up. “It's not like that. I like both. I mean, yes, obviously I like Aaron the most, he's my boyfriend. But it's not one or the other.”

She nods, looking down at her folder. “I'm not sure I could kiss a girl.”

“No one's asking you to.”

“No but I mean, isn't it weird? Snogging your best mate and that?”

Robert shakes his head, thinks about the first time he got Aaron in his arms, really in his arms, up against him and heavy, solid in a way nothing else in Robert's life has ever been. “No. It felt like, why haven't we been doing this the whole time?”

She's got a little smile on her face, lip balm shiny and outside the lines. “That's nice. I hope I have that one day.”

Robert nods. He hopes so too. For as irritating as she is, Donna is easy to be around, and easy to talk to. He hasn't had anyone other than Aaron to talk to in a long time.

“You know, I think you're really brave.”

It makes his insides sour, curling in on themselves. “I'm not.”

“Rob,” she reaches out, hand small and warm on his shoulder. “What your dad did to you was awful.”

He shrugs her away. “I know that.”

“Do you?” she's got this look on her face, and it's pity but it's not, it doesn't make him cringe away quite so much.

He decides to be honest with her. “I don't really like talking about it.” He doesn't really like thinking about it.

“Oh! Ok, sorry-”

“It's fine, just-”

“No I get it, let's talk about something else.”

He rubs a hand over his face, to scrub away the moment, maybe. “We could try coastal erosion?”

“No, that's boring,” she flops over on her back, head hanging over the side of the bed so he's got a really fetching view down into her nose. “Do you think Marlon's fit?”

“Marlon?!”

:::

“Marlon?!”

“That's what I said.”

“Our Marlon? From the pub? _Paddy's_ Marlon? She's fucking tapped.”

“That's what I said.”

“Who said what now?” Paddy asks, coming down into the living room. He drops a bag of crisps on Aaron's lap and sits down in the armchair to hog all the popcorn.

Aaron's already got his mouth full, but since when has that stopped him?

“Robert's new mate fancies Marlon.”

Robert puts a hand over his eyes. “Which she would probably rather didn't get back to him.”

But Paddy's already leaning over the arm of his chair. “Which mate?”

Robert shakes his head. “No one.”

“Donna Windsor,” Aaron tells him, because loyalty is a myth to Aaron. “What? He's not gonna tell him.”

“Of course he is, look at him.”

Paddy's red in the face, mouth dropped open. His glasses are practically steamed up. “Viv's Donna? Fancies Marlon? Our Marlon?”

“That's what I said,” says Aaron.

Robert drops a punch to Aaron's thigh. “Can we just shut up about it? She was probably joking.”

“Well I should hope so,” Paddy says, sitting back. “He's old enough to be her dad.”

Aaron makes a face. “Not really.”

This time Robert gives up on pleasantries and just puts his hand over Aaron's mouth instead. “Let's just watch the film, yeah?”

Aaron licks his palm, which is not nearly as off-putting as he always seems to think it is.

Paddy falls asleep an hour in though, and Aaron lets him get away with trading quiet little kisses on the sofa until the credits roll, so Robert'll let him off.

:::

Donna sits with him at lunch now, in the north corner of the common room, under the embarrassing tribute to Blink 182 left by last year's upper sixth. She eats pasta salad with a little plastic fork and sprays mayonnaise when she talks.

It offends Robert greatly that he's starting to find it sort of endearing.

“What about Andy?”

Robert gapes at her. “He's my _brother_. Sort of.”

“Oh yeah, sorry. Forget him then. What about Cain Dingle?”

He lifts an eyebrow. “Aaron's uncle?”

She nods, like asking him if he fancies his boyfriend's uncle is a perfectly normal thing to do.

“No, Donna,” he says. “I don't fancy Cain Dingle.”

“I”m not saying fancy. Just admit he's fit.”

“No.”

“He is though.”

“Well no offence, but we've already established your taste is more than a bit questionable.”

She laughs, because she's like that, he knows now. Impossible to offend. “You think Aaron's fit though.”

He sighs, put upon. “Yes.”

“Bit miserable with it, though.”

Robert has to laugh. He isn't. It's easy for everyone else to mistake his grunting, glaring bluster for miserable. But Aaron's nothing like that. He's prickly, sure, but he's funny with it. The funniest person Robert knows. And he smiles a lot more than anyone gives him credit for.

Still, Aaron's got a reputation to protect. “Still fit though,” is what he says.

“Who's fit?” Katie asks. She's standing on the other side of the low table Robert's got his feet on, one hand curled around the strap of her bag.

She hasn't got Andy hanging out her arse for once, and she's addressing him in public, so this is all new territory to him. For lack of the correct thing to say, he says nothing.

Luckily, he's got Donna now. “Robert's Aaron,” she says, looking as oblivious to the atmosphere between him and Katie as she possibly could. Like she thinks Katie doesn't know who Aaron is. If Robert didn't know her, he'd believe she was for real.

Katie's cheek twitches. “Yours now is he?”

“Always has been,” Robert shrugs, because he doesn't want anyone getting confused about that.

Katie wavers for a minute, before she deflates. She's looks like shit, he realises now; black smudges under the hollows of her eyes, hair in a ratty ponytail. She looks like she hasn't slept.

“You alright?” he sits forward.

“Can we talk?”

“About what?”

But she shakes her head, eyes Donna reluctantly. “Not here.”

If it was anyone else, if there wasn't so much history tied up in knots between them, he'd probably have told her to get lost. As it is, he gives Donna the end of his muffin and follows Katie down to the empty classroom at the end of the hall.

It's one of the woodwork rooms, smell of burning and wood shavings fresh in the air. He parks his hip against the end of one of the work stations, watches her pace away.

When she doesn't say anything he huffs. “You're the one who dragged me in here,” he tells her. “Cut to the chase yeah?”

“Do you love him?”

It's not what he was expecting, so he doesn't even think to lie. “Yeah.”

She nods, bitter with it, but her lip doesn't curl this time. “What about me?”

“What?”

“Did you ever love me? Or was I just a bit of fun until you were ready to come out?”

Robert rolls his eyes. “What do you care? You're going out with my brother.”

“Just answer the question, Robert. Tell the truth for once in your life.”

He feels ancient, suddenly, too worn out and stretched thin to deal with this stupid conversation. “You were easy,” he tells her. “You were easy, and I was bored,” he shrugs. “That honest enough for you?”

He doesn't take any real pride in the way her eyes go glassy, but he doesn't feel bad about it either, can't feel anything at all right now.

She shakes her head, thumbs away a tear before it can fall. “I don't believe you.”

“Believe what you like.”

“So it didn't mean anything to you? None of it? What, you were just killing time?”

He doesn't like the person he can feel himself being, but he doesn't know how to shake it off. “Pretty much.”

“Robert, we had _sex_.”

She says it like it means something, and it cracks in his chest. “Katie-”

“No,” she says, louder. “No. You said you loved me, you said it was special. And now you're just going to turn around and shack up with another bloke? With Aaron, for god's sake? Who even are you?”

It hardens the softening place behind his ribs, the tender bit of him that had tumbled her into bed for the first time, for both their first times, the bit that brushed her hair back and kissed her face and forgot, for a while maybe, that there was an Andy and a world just outside the room. He could never have been that person for her. The only bit of him worth having was always for Aaron.

He's not going to kid himself that it's the kind thing to do, but it's the only thing he has left. “You've got a boyfriend,” he reminds her. “Shagging me behind my brother's back does not make this some sort of love story, alright. I say a lot of thing to a lot of girls. I'm sorry if I gave you the wrong idea,” he tries to say it kindly, like he's doing her a favour, but he's not sure it comes off.

Sometimes, Katie looks hard, untouchable. That's what had made her so interesting to touch, probably. She's nothing like that now – she's brittle like glass and barely keeping the shards together. Maybe they're more alike than Robert thought.

“I love Aaron,” he says, in case she needs to hear it. “I don't care what that makes me.”

“Fuck you,” she spits, teeth bared.

He has this idea, that she's only still standing because he's watching her, and he moves to leave so she can shatter in peace.

He's never felt more like his father's son.

:::

Aaron's not at the garage, and he's not at the pub when Robert knocks on.

Charity's brow wrinkles when she shrugs, tells him she doesn't know where he might be. “You alright, babe?” she asks and Robert, who is drowning, doesn't dare ask her for help.

Paddy's sat at the kitchen table with a sandwich. He looks up when Robert barrels through the door, but catches him before he can run up the stairs.

“Hey, hey, what's happened?” Paddy's asking, holding him by the arms.

Robert can't speak, doesn't know what he's supposed to say. Even when he tries to do the right thing, it always turns out wrong.

Except, Paddy's not letting go, arms locked around Robert, hand on the back of his head to press his face to the bulk of Paddy's shoulder. He doesn't realise he's crying until Paddy starts shushing him, hand chaffing at his back.

“It's ok,” Paddy says. “It's going to be ok.”

Robert sags, lets someone else take his weight for a while.

:::

Paddy's got him sat at the table, blazer exchanged for Aaron's purple hoodie, the one Aaron keeps leaving on Robert's floor. He's got a brew steaming between his hands, because Paddy is actually an old woman.

“She'll forgive you,” Paddy says, hand splayed on the table between them.

Robert shakes his head. He's got a headache from crying, face tight and hot. His insides are shivering. “I don't want her to. I want her to leave me alone.”

“You should probably have thought about that before you slept with her,” Paddy says gently.

The front door bangs open, blast of cold air around Robert's ankles. Aaron comes in, rustling in his stupid coat, rubs a hand through Robert's hair even with Paddy looking on. “What's happened? Charity said you were upset about something.”

“He had a run in with Katie,” Paddy tells him, when Robert doesn't know what to say. “He wasn't very nice to her.”

Aaron drags a chair round so he can sit right beside Robert, hand on his leg. “She normally deserves it,” he says to Paddy.

“She wanted to know if I loved you,” Robert says. “And if that meant I'd never loved her.”

Aaron's lips part, surprised, and Paddy rises. “I'll leave you to it.”

Robert watches Aaron watch him go; two steps down into the living room and the snick of the door latch closing behind him.

Aaron turns to him. “What did you tell her?”

“The truth.”

Aaron nods, draws him in to kiss at Robert's twisted mouth. He hugs him tighter than anyone else, Aaron, always has.

“Do you want to go upstairs?” Aaron asks. “We could watch old Mock the Week and guess the news.”

He's dozing on Aaron's shoulder before the first episode ends, a smile on his face because Aaron's laughing at something, and warm because they're under the covers in their clothes.

This is where he's supposed to be.

He'll be alright in the morning.

 


End file.
